The present invention relates generally to digital broadcast receiving devices capable of recording and reproducing broadcast programs.
In recent years, television (TV) broadcasting is promoted to shift from analog to digital schemes in countries around the world. In Japan also, communications satellite (CS) and broadcasting satellite (BS) broadcast services relying upon digital technologies have already commenced; in addition, digital terrestrial broadcasting services have also started in selected areas.
A feature of the domestic digital terrestrial broadcast in Japan is that the orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) technique is used as its transmission scheme to thereby enable achievement of not only fixed reception but also mobile/cellular reception, while offering the capability to establish hierarchical transmission up to three graded classes or “layers” in maximum. With the use of such hierarchized transmission, it becomes possible to provide broadcast services with mutual synchronization between mobile reception-directed broadcast (strong hierarchical layer) and fixed reception-aimed broadcast (weak layer). An example thereof is disclosed, for example, in ARIB-TR14 Version 1.5, OPERATIONAL GUIDELINES FOR DIGITAL TERRESTRIAL TELEVISION BROADCASTING Section 7, Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcast Delivery Handling Rules,” (Oct. 16, 2003).
Techniques for receiving the broadcast that uses such the hierarchical transmission are known, one of which is disclosed for example in JP-A-2000-165766 (page 5, FIG. 1).
Additionally, in the background of cost reduction and storage capacity increase of hard disk drive (HDD) units, there is known a technique for using a digital broadcast receiver with built-in HDD to record and reproduce digital broadcast contents directly in the format of MPEG2-TS, which stands for “moving pictures experts group phase two, transport stream.” For detail, see JP-A-2003-9085 (page 17, FIG. 1).